


The Story of Else

by MoonlightShines (Thatkillervibe)



Series: Killervibe Week 2019 [7]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Killervibe Week 2019, Magic, Princes & Princesses, fairytale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 22:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20683208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkillervibe/pseuds/MoonlightShines
Summary: There once was a girl.Her name was Caitlin of Centralythes, and she was good.





	The Story of Else

**Author's Note:**

> I am so late with this, I am appalled with myself. Unfortunately, I'm still not done with the whole story but I wanted to give you something!

There once was a girl. A good girl. A good girl who grew up into a sweet, good woman. 

  
A woman who listened to her mother and spent hours to bake bread for children who were hungry. A woman who had brown hair and bright hazel eyes, fair skin and pretty eyelashes. A woman who looked out the window while sewing to watch nature. A woman who loved to step in puddles in the rain when others stayed in. 

Her name was Caitlin of Centralythes, and she was good. 

Caitlin preoccupied herself with being good. With every other thought, every step she took as she walked down the cobbled roads, she thought to herself, “I must be good.” 

“Why must you be good,” her loveliest friend Iris, storyteller of Centralythes asked one day. 

Caitlin took her time to answer, counting coins to give to the beggar on the street. “Because I must,” she said, “Because I need to.” 

She had no more coins left but she happily stuffed her empty purse into the pocket of her apron and skipped forward, chipper and bright. 

“I see,” Iris replied, although her friend did not see it at all.

“But do you secretly wish to be perfect?” she asked some time later, waiting at the tailor’s office to fetch new fabrics for their dresses. For Caitlin’s answer probed in Iris’ mind, unable to leave her alone. 

“No,” Caitlin replied with a trace of confusion. “I simply wish to be good.” 

“You are,” Iris confirmed. “Naturally, without thought. So why must you worry?” 

The smile on Caitlin’s face froze, and she took a dainty step back, bumping into a man behind her. “I don’t worry,” she said with a frightened voice. “I don’t worry at all.” 

But she was lying, and that wasn’t good. 

~.~ 

At home, Caitlin’s mother was strict and orderly but not unkind. 

“These go here and those go there,” she said. 

“Yes mother,” Caitlin replied dutifully, and would fix her mistake. 

She liked to please her, and so followed her lead without much question. 

But Caitlin was a girl of many questions. 

She wished to know why her mother stopped singing, and who her father was. She wished to know why her friend Iris was so cautious, and her town so full of the poor. It was not good to ask, she reasoned. Her mother seemed saddened by the lack of her father, and Iris kept her heart guarded, and some questions were so big they had no answers.

  
  
~.~

One day Caitlin woke up to grey clouds and hail with a wonderful idea. 

“I want to be a doctor,” she said to herself, giddy at the thought. There she could be of use, with countless opportunities to help people with cuts and bruises through medicines and compassion. 

She slipped on her slippers and ran to the physician’s, knocking on his door. 

Henry Allen of Centralythes answered, rubbing at his tired eyes. 

“Hello,” he said. “Are you ill?” 

“Good morning, sir.” She smiled as hail pelted against the hood of her cloak and presented what she had to offer. “Not in the slightest, I have come to ask to be trained like you.” 

The physician opened his door and let her into his office. “It is hard work,” he warned. 

Caitlin smiled, “But it is good.” 

“Indeed,” he murmured. He studied her character, and found her fit for the challenge.

“We shall start at once,” he announced and so they did. 

Caitlin studied and observed and studied some more, watching patient after patient as Henry the physician treated and mended and helped and fixed. 

She kept doing so until she knew everything the physician did, until everything to know about medicine and treatments Henry taught her she could do even better.

“There,” he said, gifting Caitlin with a big black doctor’s bag. “You are a doctor now. In fact, you are the best. Better than me.”

The girl ducked her head at the praise. “Oh, I doubt that, sir,” she humbled, but the older man shook his head.

“It is true. You are very good.”

Now the physician’s only son was named Bartholomew, and he had seen all that Caitlin has done. 

“You are quite remarkable,” he said, “And I wish for your hand to marry.”

“No thank you,” said Caitlin, for she did not care for him like so. She bit her lip at Bartholomew's utter loss of hope. “But my friend Iris may suit your fancy," she added. 

“Iris,” Bartholomew perked, straightening up from his bended knee. “Iris, daughter of Joseph? She has returned to Centralythes?”

“She was gone?” Caitlin asked, completely surprised.

“Yes, Iris was my childhood companion. She had left to find a fairy that would mend her broken heart. I have loved her for many years, tell me, has her heart healed?”

Caitlin thought hard. “Well, perhaps not, but if you bring her here I shall mend it.” 

Bartholomew who now urged Caitlin to call him Barry leapt for joy, kissing her cheeks and ran down the cobbled road in search for Iris. 

At dusk, Bartholomew, now Barry, brought Iris over to his father’s office. His father had laid down to nap.

Caitlin still believed that Iris was lovely as she was but Barry had asked for her heart to be unbroken and so Caitlin decided that must be what she ought to do.

“Come sit,” she told her friend and she did, at the edge of the examining stool. 

“How come you have not told me of your ill?”

“Well,” Iris began nervously, “I have learned much from my journey to find a fairy, and on this journey I found myself.”

“I see,” Caitlin replied, although she in truth did not see it at all. 

Caitlin looked through her bag, “Why then, is your heart still broken?”

Iris opened her mouth to speak as Caitlin took out her stethoscope. Lovely Iris began her story but Caitlin had to interrupted her politely. “I need silence to hear the broken heart beat.”

“But—” said Iris.

“Hush,” the doctor soothed. 

It became apparent to the new doctor that lovely Iris’s heart was indeed broken. 

“It’s cracked!” she exclaimed, aghast, having never heard such a sad heart.

“Yes,” Iris said, “But I am—”

“I will fix it.”

“Yes, she will fix it,” Bartholomew now Barry reassured.

Iris twisted her face complicatedly, grabbing Bartholomew now Barry’s hands. “Barry. Now wait.” 

“No time to wait,” he said. “We must go fast!” 

“And I must be good!” Caitlin chimed in. 

“Yes,” said Barry. “Your heart will be healed and we shall be married. Don’t you wish to be my wife?”

“I do,” Iris confirmed. “But—”

“So we shall fix her heart at once!” they chorused. 

Iris’s voice drowned out, her story left unheard. 

“Drink this!” Caitlin urged, procuring her bottle from her black bag. 

Iris drank the bottle. The three waited ten minutes. 

“Do you feel better?” Caitlin asked. 

Iris stood up, looking out the window. “Not exactly, not for certain, in fact, not at all.”

“What?” Caitlin’s face went pale as death. That couldn’t be. 

Iris picked up the empty bottle. “This was no good.” 

“No good?!?” Caitlin cried. “But I am an excellent doctor!” 

“Yes, well you are, but your medicine is not.”

“No, no,” Caitlin refused, her heart sinking to lead. She pulled out her stethoscope again. “There must be a mistake. I am a good doctor, I know I am good!” 

Barry nodded. “She is good, I don’t suppose maybe you have lived so long with a broken heart you no longer remember it mended?”

“Possibly,” lovely Iris allowed. Caitlin checked for confirmation.

But Iris’s heart was still broken and was still sad. 

Tears sprung to Caitlin’s eyes. “I have given you false hope. I have failed.” 

“Sometimes things fail,” Iris mused. 

“But I was supposed to be good.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean perfect?”

“No!” said Caitlin of Centralythes. “No! No! Not perfect, only good, but now I am neither!”

She packed her bag and grabbed her cloak. “I must go.” 

She needed air.

Caitlin picked up her skirt and ran. She ran until her calves burned, until her throat cried for water. Until she had gone far enough away for humiliation to take a break before it returned to swallow her whole. 

Caitlin bent over the Wells’ Well, gasping. She let her eyelids fall close as her heart returned to its regular thump.

Her reflection stared back at her in the water of the well. A Caitlin of Centralythes with a shock of white hair and a sneer. Caitlin gasped, pulling away. 

“Your inside and outside appearances don’t match, my dear,” someone rasped.

Caitlin startled, whipping her head left and right to greet the eyes of the voice. A man in a yellow garb stepped out of the Wells house. 

“Master Wells?” He did not look how she remembered. 

“No,” said he. “I only wear his face.” Caitlin’s heart seized in her chest, her fingers frozen with fear, clutched against the edge of the well.

Only wizards were lunatic enough to wear others’ faces. And wizards, most wizards, meant trouble. 

“My name is Eobard Thawne, and I am a powerful wizard.” Caitlin sighed, for she had been correct in her assumption, but that did not mean she wished to be. 

The powerful wizard pulled the bucket from the well, and scooped up a cup of drinking water. “You seem to thirst.”

Caitlin eyed the water. It was not good to be impolite. It was not good to have preconceptions. It was also not good to die from poison.

The powerful wizard heartily laughed. “There is no magic in the water,” he said. “I promise.”

Caitlin took a sip. It tasted like the way water should. Bland. “What did you mean, about my appearance?”

Eobard pointed his crooked finger at her, beckoning her closer. 

Caitlin squirmed as she did so, and he whispered into her ear. “Sometimes bad is good.”

The words struck a frenzied panic, as a voice in her head agreed. 

“Don’t you think so?”

_ She knew so. _

Caitlin of Centralythes wanted to say no, but a monster climbed out of her throat, taking away her words. She grabbed at her throat, petrified. 

_ Let me out. _

“Yes,” Eobard hissed, “Come to the light.” 

_ You mean out of the dark. _

“What did you put in my water?” she choked out, her voice sounded like an alien to her own ears.

Caitlin struggled with her feet, attempting to disobey the strong urge to follow him into the house.

“I won’t!” she announced stubbornly, her chin quivering. “I won’t! I won’t!” His hand was on hers, pulling her in, but Caitlin dug her heels into the dirt and snarled. This one was her own._ “I won’t!” _

Eobard’s smile disappeared into the depths of his face, sordid. “Well,” he spat. “I’ll simply have to curse you. One day you will return to Eobard the Evil!”

He snapped his fingers, and vanished. 

Caitlin breathed heavily over the dried Wells’ Well. The bucket was empty but her mind was swimming with madness. 

Good tangled with something else, it did not come so easy, but fear was stronger, urging her to go. To leave, because the little ugly voice in the back of her head, the one that made her worry for so long, since she was but a little girl, grew stronger. Grew louder. Got hungrier, and she could not let that voice win, could not risk her sanity and return to the house like the powerful wizard prophesied. 

For, deep in her bones Caitlin of Centralythes knew if she did... she’d end up just like that powerful wizard. 

~.~

Caitlin slipped away into the dusk, disappearing into the forest which separated the lands. She brought nothing with her but the hooded cloak over her shoulders and her black doctor bag. 

She walked and walked and then walked some more, into the depths of the forest, the greens of the trees with their thick brown trunks which Caitlin’s hands would trail along their rough surface as she stepped over roots in the earth.

She walked so long her slippers wore thin and when she turned there was nothing left of the life she remembered. She did not know where she was going, and likely wouldn’t until she got there. It felt out of her skin, it felt slimy like a snake, slithering into her stomach, to not have a plan.

It was imperative, however, that she would not go back, could not go back, and for that she was certain. 

Rabbits and deer peered at her through the thicket, then startled away when she moved. 

And soon, Caitlin would feel weary and would stumble from fatigue. The sky now darkened, and the air cold with chill, Caitlin sat on a large rock, in the middle of nowhere, shamelessly lost. 

_ Well_, Caitlin thought to herself, chipper despite her circumstances, _ Let’s see what I have brought. _

She opened her bag and peered inside, her tools and instruments helpful for others but not her hungry stomach. She closed her eyes and wondered what she must do. 

She could have been sat for five minutes or fifty when horse hooves clattered and rattled the ground. 

Caitlin kept her eyes closed to not make eye contact with a stranger, to keep herself from being embarrassing and begging them to bring her back home. 

The hooves came to a stop, but neighing and horse grunts remained along with the rustling of a saddle. 

Footsteps made her way to her and if she were now to encounter a giant or a beast she figured she ought to keep her eyes closed and simply meet her fate. 

A soft breath grazed her cheek, a warm hand met her knee. It was too small to belong to any giant. Too soft to belong to any beast. Too comforting to not be dangerous.

“Won’t you open your eyes for me?” 

The voice was masculine, strong and sure, accented unlike any dialect in Centralythes. Caitlin’s heart picked up in her chest, and she kept her eyes closed, stubbornly. 

“I won’t,” she said, matter-of-fact. “If you are a sorcerer or a troll I’d rather not train my eyes upon my captor.” She dug her hand, however, around her black bag. She pulled out her scalpel, waving it to and fro. “This is a weapon!” 

“It is a lovely weapon,” the voice replied calmly. “How pointy.” 

“And I’m not afraid to use it!”

“Certainly not,” the voice soothed. “No doubt in my mind. Although I must ask, my lady, how you intend to cause harm without sighting your enemy. Creatively, surely. I cannot wait to find out.”

Caitlin growled, for he was clever. She peeked up, eyelashes fluttering as she unclenched her fist from the metal rod. 

She blinked, then blinked again at the sight before her. 

A man was kneeling in soil in front of her rock. He had thick long black hair and wore black, red and gold finery. His eyes were big and gentle, and his lips curved in a charming smile. 

This was no sorcerer no wizard or troll or goblin. 

No, the golden crown on his head made it certain. 

This was a prince. 

Her scalpel fell from her grasp, her mouth parted in awe. 

“Oh wow,” the prince said, sounding breathless himself. He bent down to return her dropped tool, their fingers brushing as he did so. “You have beautiful eyes.” 

Caitlin sucked in a breath, glancing up at his own, and she found herself quickly returning her gaze to her lap, twisting her fingers into her skirt as her heart picked up speed. She tried to say something likewise, but the words tangled up in a jumble in her mouth. 

Heat rushed to her cheeks. This has never happened before. Caitlin closed her eyes, then found herself unable to keep them that way, compelled to look back at the prince.

“Thank you?” she took his hand, accepting his help to get on her feet. She stood as tall as possible, but her footing wobbled. Caitlin felt like she could float away like the dust of a dandelion in a summer breeze if he let go. 

So she held on tightly. 

“Have you..?” she reddened, it sounded silly out loud. “Have you cast a spell on me?” 

The prince’s face lit up with a delightful laugh, squeezing her fingers as he laced them together with gloved own. “No! I was about to ask the same thing.” 

“Me?” she repeated, astonished. “Why would you think I’d cast a spell on _ you?” _

He turned around and laughed with disbelief. His smile was heart-stirring, beautiful and tender.

He tugged her closer, and she followed with ease.

“Because,” he murmured, his hair blowing around his royal face. “I didn’t know there was someone missing in my life until I saw you, threatening me with that scalpel.” 

A flustered giggle escaped Caitlin of Centralythes, shocking her so. She hasn’t sounded so giddy since she was a little girl. 

And in that moment, by the very dull rock, love at first sight blossomed between Caitlin from Centralythes, the runaway doctor, and this man, this treasure, this foreign prince. 

“What is your name?” he urged her, desperately. 

“Caitlin of—” she stopped short. She was no longer of Centralythes. She had no origin. No home, any longer. The prince waited, intrigued. 

She started again. “My name is Caitlin of Else.” She remembered to curtsy. 

The prince did not question this fantastical kingdom, simply stretched his smile further and bowed to the waist. “Prince Francisco III of Ramonisles.”

Caitlin now of Else twisted her fingers nervously. It was different somehow, knowing the man she was lying to was a prince in theory, and then hearing his title. “Your highness—” 

“Cisco,” he insisted. 

“Cisco?” 

“What I wish to be called by you.”

“Oh. I see." It was becoming so dark she feared she may no longer see his face, so she memorized it in which she could remember even in the depths of night.

She did not test the new name. 

“I cannot help but wonder if you’re lost? If you’d like a ride home?”

Caitlin shook her head quite sharply, refusing to go. 

“Then where are you headed?”

She didn’t answer. 

He led her to his steed, a gentle hand on her back. He only paused, to unfasten his thick fur cloak and drape it over her thin one on her shoulders.

“I only ask because it is soon nightfall and you have no horse or supply to keep you safe.”

Caitlin wished her fingers would not curl into his cloak so desperately. “I do not know where I am headed and I cannot go home.” 

Prince Francisco III said nothing with his mouth, but his eyes asked many more questions. 

“An evil sorcerer, Eobard the Evil waits for me there.”

“And now you have no home, no place to go.” He looked near tears. 

Caitlin turned her head. “Yes.”

The Prince caught her gaze by lifting her chin with a gentle finger. “Then you will come home with me to the kingdom of Ramonisles.”

“And intrude your court?” she stammered, realizing the grandeur of this error. She could not get caught up in his eyes this way, bringing her misfortune across kingdoms. 

“There would be no intrusion.” He glanced at her black doctor bag. “We have no court physician. You could practice for us.” 

He raised her up on his saddle and all protests died on her tongue. She truly did want to go, she did not want to be left alone in the forest.

And Prince Cisco, she blushed, turning her cheek against his back shoulder as they trotted along, she did not want to leave him either.


End file.
